A systematic review study on the reasons preventing voters from casting their votes

The purpose of this research is to categorize and synthesize studies that examine the factors influencing voting or non-voting behaviour. While there are numerous studies in the literature on the situations affecting voters’ decision to cast their votes, there seems to be no common consensus, and these studies generally focus on a limited number of reasons. This study aims to bring together the findings of these studies and identify the main trends regarding the reasons that prevent voters from casting their votes, synthesizing and merging the results. To achieve this, a systematic review method has been applied. Due to the abundance of research on the subject in the literature, the study has been limited to two databases. In this context, an article search has been made in the Web of Science and Scopus databases and the research has been limited to the articles collected through this database. As a result of the search using the keywords “voting”, “non-voting”, “voter turnout”, “voter behavior” with the word “influencing factors”, 46 articles have been found to be directly or indirectly related to the purpose of the study and included in the study. In the wake of the analysis, the factors affecting voting/non-voting behavior were categorized under 6 headings: seasonal effects, cost effects, law effects, economic effects, demographic effects and racial effects.